CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The sound of my neck's vertebra being wretched back into place filled my ears and brought the gasp of air down my throat.
My torso lurched up and my chin arched as vision returned to my already open eyes. My neck bowed backwards and each vertebra therein clicked as they were stretched. When the procession of rapid cracks reached the broken area, the two sides fused with a wickedly painful SNAP.
Tears immediately poured from my eyes to wet the tissue that had begun to dry with out the nourishment of blinking.
A whine built in my throat that gargled and turned into a mewl that was becoming a scream as I felt the collapsed lung pull back into itself and then stretch to its size. Shattered bits of bone swam around in my flesh to find its neighbor and fit back together like a Reena sized puzzle. My elbow bent at an unnatural angle and suddenly retracted, reared up and twisted hard, the tissue at the joint suddenly renewed. The inhuman pain-sound gargling at my throat - filled with blood from my torn up lung, I later realized - became an entirely human scream then, even if only for a second as i became aware of my surroundings.
Two huge, warm hands gripped my face, one on each side. The thumbs fit under the hollows of my cheeks. I realized that these hands had been the one that snapped my neck back into place.
Now the fingers dug in deeper and tried to coax my head back from its position on my neck, straining as it bowed back.
"Shhhh, shhh, Reena, Shhh!" the words were warm and quiet and desperate.
"Shh, its okay, I'm here. Come on, Little Girl, I'm here." My muscles unclenched from their hold and my jaw ground shut, the screams still coming but through my teeth as I tried to quiet them.
The pain was the kind of excruciating i'd only ever heard of in theory.
"Come here, Little girl, come here, its alright. Shh." the warm hands found their way down the sides of my neck and the arch of my back collapsed in on itself, curling my body forward into a loose ball.
It was then that I realized I was in someone's lap, held against a large, warm chest. I knew who it was and my body was not going to allow me to pretend to fight it. My muscles liquefied against him and they began to vibrate as my whole body shattered into shakes, groans pushing up through my vocal cords as the pain began to bleed away.
Matthew's substantial arms were folded around me, his face pressed to my hair and muttering warm things in my ear in another language.
Somehow it was more soothing than any words he could have said to me in English. My exhausted mind caught the words "vita", "dolor", "deliciae" and "pulchra". Was he speaking Latin?
"Matthew, get her inside, if someone sees you two-" Gabbe started soothingly.
"No." Matthew snarled.
"If I move her now the tissue will detach at the break."
"And her body will regenerate it, Matthew, the kids are on their way home from the school, we cant afford the attention." She said back calmly. Matthew swore enthusiastically and rapidly.
"Okay, Little girl, this is going to hurt, but I'm here, all right?" he murmured down to me.
He slowly pulled me even closer, tucking me under his left arm and gently encouraging my head to lie on his shoulder. His arm reached down across my back and his other tucked under my knees up closer and then caught under them.
The wining in my throat intensified, the bones in my leg still attaching and my hip filled with shards of bone from the ruined joint. My neck tensed and my teeth ground together as the screams came again.
"I'm so sorry Reena, I'm here, okay?" he lifted me off the floor and the scream filled with renewed vigor.
"Shh, its okay." he walked to the house and up the stairs, me shrieking all the way. He sat down on the couch with me in his lap, holding me to him, Latin coming from him again. It took fifteen minutes for every bone to be fusing back into place and twenty for my screaming to stop, half an hour for the pain to fully exit my system. I felt exhausted.
"Do I get her an ice pack? Asprin?" his mother fussed left and right while he held me and rubbed my back, still murmuring.
"No, mom. The system works it out." he said quietly. My body was shaking hard in the warm cage his body made and his skin made mine warm. I looked up at him to find him staring down at me with a fierceness that set my blood alight in my veins with adrenaline that I could literally feel pulse out of my adrenal glands as if each drop wanted to be closer to Matthew Dyllan Cavalier. I could see the twisting caramel gold in his eyes, and some part of me realized I'd seen it before I'd met him. His glare was unsettling and his presence was so powerful it made me feel like he was what filled my lungs to bursting. His gaze ran over my face and I could feel them like fingertips on my skin.
Down my forehead and nose, into my eyes, across my cheekbones, across my lips; I swore the gaze there lingered before moving down my throat, to the emerald between my breasts.
Again, I swore it lingered.
He was checking to see if I was all right. It made my gut warm.
"Still feeling it?" he asked, eyes imploring me to answer. Relaxing the muscles that held my jaw tight took more effort than I thought, my molars throbbed with the sudden loss of pressure, and my voice cracked two times when I said the words;
"Little, yeah."
"Can you stand?" He asked.
"Doubtful." I muttered.
"Okay, are you comfortable?" the question was laden with the implication of "Do you want to stay on my lap or not?"
I really, really wanted to stay right where i was.
I was saved from response by the words "What. The. Fuck." Instinct whipped my head around and pain made me regret it with a hiss, hands flying up to hold the back of my neck.
Joey stood with his backpack strap white-knuckled in his left hand, glaring daggers right at me.
"Shit." Matthew and I said it at the same time.
Joey dropped the bag and stomped over. Alex cut him off.
"She's been through enough today, Joey." I then realized what this was. I was being guarded and protected by Gabbe and Alex, and Matthew was their general. Joey glared at his father and stomped up the stairs.
"He hates me." I said it matter of factly, my voice returning with my strength.
"Now does someone want to tell me why I died and came back and why all of you are perfectly okay with it?" I questioned. Matthew snapped his gaze back to me. "You know?"
I stared at him.
"I wasn't sure. But I think your response just there confirmed it. I came back to life?" I asked.
He sighed.
"Matthew-" his father started.
"Dad, they turned her over to me when I turned eighteen. This is my call." Mathew's voice left no room for argument.
"Turned me over?" I asked, suddenly needing space.
On wobbly legs like a new born calf, I got off of him and awkwardly staggered a few steps away from the three people that had effectively confirmed they knew who I was.
"You know who I am." I said, pointing a shaking, accusatory finger at the undeniably sexy and scary man, sitting on the couch, regarding me with a furrowed, concerned brow.
"No." he cut out, raising to his feet but holding his hands up like he was approaching a startled, wild creature.
"No, you know who you are. I know who you WERE." I sent him a cruel look.
"And you never thought to tell me? About my life?" I yelled the latter sentence, pointing the finger from earlier into my own sternum.
"It's a very complicated life." his lips quirked up into a half smile that looked terribly sad.
"A very full, very dangerous, very complicated life." he took a step forward, and I mirrored it back.
"You need to trust me." he tried to coax.
"You pointed a gun at me!" I yelled, tears pricking at my eyes.
"I was protecting you!" he said, and I could see the corners of his eyes pinch. I was angering him. "I'd never hurt you!" he snapped.
"Oh, right!" I yelled, arms flipping out to my sides in exasperation.
"I've been protecting you for fourteen years, Reena." he snapped. It made me tear back and stare at him.
He took two deep, long breaths before continuing. "From the day I first saw you I told you everything was going to be okay, and I meant it. Fourteen years ago." he took two steps forward, hesitated, and closed the space between us.
"I protected you before I even knew what it meant, I protected you when you pretended you were just like those other idiot girls. I know you're terrified of me." he took another step closer. "And I know why. But on that night? I was protecting you then, too." He crouched a little to meet my eyes head on. "I can tell you your name. I can tell you how you got here. I'll tell you anything you want to know-" his words were earnest and I'd never heard his voice so warm before. "Almost anything." Alex cut him off. "Matthew, you know the rules. Oh, fuck." Alex grunted, realization flooding his eyes. "You're going to have to go find them."
Alex Cavalier accounted for the heights both his sons possessed and some of the largeness of Mathews build. His hair was red and beneath his lip he had two barely visible darker spots that had been a double snake bite piercing when he was younger. His hair was red and cropped classically, his build large and square his height probably nearing six feet seven inches. He was the biggest man in Blue Grove and had the largest reputation. He'd been a high flying detective in the NYPD before being recruited to the FBI where he brought down a notorious biker gang and put vicious criminals behind bars. He met Gabbe Ryan in New York when she was in nursing school and a few years his senior. Only two years later the couple married and, despite their short courtship, had one of the healthiest relationships I'd ever seen. When Gabbe fell pregnant around their first anniversary, they'd settled down to quiet Blue Grove to live their lives. She was a small, wiry woman with a short, straight, severe bob cut to her dark chocolate hair. She had the sweetest heart of gold but the ability to put her foot down which had earned her the highest nursing position in Blue Grove hospital, where she was regarded with more admiration than half of the doctors.
Matthew's jaw clicked shut with a hollow reverberation that should have made his molars shatter and fury filled his eyes.
"No," he snarled. He immediately tuned around, putting himself firmly between his father and I, fists clenched and arms held slightly out to the side. His stance suggested he was shielding me.
"They're the ones that did this to her!"
"Yes and if you run off half cocked making these decisions by yourself She will kill you. And He wont stop her." Alex snapped at his oldest child.
"Boys, that's enough." Gabbe stepped in, folding her arms and her brown eyes looking stern.
"Matthew. As much as she is your responsibility, first and foremost, she is Kat and James'."
James, the man from my memory.
"You know this, and your hands are tied. Now all of you, sit down and discuss this like adults." her tone was calm but deadly. A few beats of tense silence followed before Matthew stepped out of my way and let me sit down, taking up the seat next to me.
"Please, just tell me." I said.
He sighed, and for the first time, I saw Matthew Dyllan Cavalier look tired, drained and put out. He leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees and rubbed his hands over his face.
His stubbled, tanned skin flushed for a moment and he pinched the bridge of his nose, pressing his eyes shut. I studied his side profile. Even sitting down his head was higher than mine, and his ample, wide shoulders were slumped forward, muscles still straining against the thin shirt. He swore again, with gusto.
"Do you know where they are?" He asked his father, who's body position mimicked his son's, his wife standing over his right shoulder with a hand on it. Her eyes, though, were locked on me, assessing. It made me feel like a specimen in a glass jar.
"No. But I know where they're going to be." He ground out.
"What is going on?" I asked, but my breath was wasted- I was flat ignored. "In two weeks there's an auction of ancient antique Spanish jewelry. The recently recovered Vivasco's Diamonds will be going on sale. I'd stake my life on it that they're either hired to protect them or hired to steal them." Alex said.
"Were they part of the Nexcov collection? Can you get us in?" Matthew asked. Alex drew a long breath between his teeth. He nodded.
"I'll see what I can do." he got up and marched off, presumably to handle the situation.
"Start explaining." I said in the silence after his mother quietly retreated. Warm toffee stared at me and I realized that I damn well loved the color.
"What do you want to hear?"
"My name." I said immediately. "I want to know my name."
The pause felt like it went on for days but it lasted seconds, he and I locked in an intense gaze. He dropped his eyes.
"Your name is Katherine Valeria Elvira Lazura Nexcov." he paused over every name. The vowels and consonants rolled from his lips as if each letter had been designed, carved, created to be spoken by the rich, dark chocolate of his voice, dipped in caramel by the gentleness in his eyes. His sound was low and sweet; he knew how important each syllable was to me, and with each stroke his lips made around my name, a pressure melted and glided down and off of my shoulders.
"Katherine. Valeria. Elvira..." I tested each name out on my tongue. They sounded regal to my ears. For some reason I choked on my fourth name.
"Lazura." He murmured, his eyes conveying some deep importance that I was missing. "As in, of Lazarus. Lazura."
"Lazarus." I whispered, feeling the color drain from my face. "The biblical man that rose from the dead." my head felt light and my vision began to swim in grey.
"Hey, Reena, it's okay. Stay with me." He said, a hand catching my arm when I swayed.
"Its pretty." I said. He smiled suddenly.
"No. Its beautiful." he corrected. I send him a flat look.
"What is that supposed to mean? Why didn't I die? Who are my parents, are they alive?" I asked, and watched Matthew's open demeanor shut.
"I cant tell you that. Its not my place." each word was coated in acid and he was clearly displeased with having to force them out.
"Tell me about when I got here." he sent me a relieved look. "They found you and brought you to my father. You were covered in soot and ash and you looked like someone pushed you down a hill in autumn. You had a whole forest of plants in your hair." he started laughing and a sweet giggle made me look up. Gabbe sat down on my other side.
"Blue Grove hadn't ever had to deal with something like you before. An orphan, I mean, so they brought you to Alex." she smiled lovingly. "He was in the FBI, you know, so the police station thought that if anyone knew what to do with the four year old little girl, it was him. They brought you to us. They didn't know that we were waiting for you. Alex knew you were coming. Kat and James charged us with looking after you when they couldn't." Kat? Was this the woman in my dream? She had to be! Was she my mother? She and James? I had parents and they were alive. They'd put me in Blue grove to keep me safe. Just like Tommy, I had parents that loved me.
"Your parents, adoptive, I mean, had been looking adopt so Alex pulled some strings and made sure you got the most normal life you could. It was what they asked us to do- to keep you safe." she reached out and squeezed my hand.
"Matthew was the one that took to watching over you the most to heart. When he turned eighteen, James made him First Guard to you." she smiled.
"Mom." Matthew used the word as a rebuff but it was tinged with embarrassment.
"Oh, Matthew Dyllan Cavalier, calm down would you?" She dismissed him. She smiled at me gently, maternally.
"You grew up better than we could have hoped, Katherine." she smiled an it felt foreign, strange, awkward to have her call me that.
"Strong, brave and beautiful." she said. "They'll be proud. So proud." she whispered, her eyes going watery, straight hair falling forward as she tilted her head down.
"How did you get back?" Matthew asked suddenly, seemingly desperate for a topic change. His eyes clouded and his expression became hard. I swear I saw loathing. "We've been looking everywhere." he conceded.
"Well," I sighed and leaned back into the cushions. "Today wasn't the first day I-" the sentence got stuck in my throat. I tried again "-died." Gabbe winced.
"I guess you know they got to me on the way home, you took my car back." A look at Matthew's face covered in thinly veiled anger confirmed it.
"Why did you cover it up?" I asked.
"We cant afford any more attention on you. Police, missing persons. that's to much. They already found you, we're not going to male it easier for them." Gabbe muttered. That made another question I needed to ask. Matthew's glare told me he needed his answer first.
"They put me in the trunk." I tilted my chin up defiantly, and my voice cut through the tension, clear as a bell. Caramel eyes stared at me appraisingly. "Who were they, by the way?" I asked.
He sighed. "There are three types of people you now get to worry about. People who know who you are and want to kill you. People who know who you are and want to worship it- by kidnapping you. And people who don't know who you are and have been paid to either kidnap or kill you. My guess is these guys were the paid variety. Let me guess; two man team, eccentric looking, a bit of a wild eye thing going on?" I nodded solemnly.
"Yeah, they drove for a whole day with me in the back." I said. Gabbe whispered the words "Oh, God." His hands clenched really tightly, and I could feel heat begin to radiate off of him in waves.
"We got hit by another car on the bridge and we went over into a lake. And I drowned." Images of the water, the feeling of it crawling up my body, it filling my airways- The two men's corpses, pale, staring but not seeing, their cold rubbery flesh rubbing against me- Matthew's warm hand cupped my elbow over the green material of the shirt that wasn't ruined and the ice flooding me receded.
"You drowned and came back still in the trunk." His voice was angry. "That was what happened." my tone was brittle. "Shit." his mother shot him a sharp look and me complied with a
"Sorry, mom."
"Its getting late." Gabbe said, standing and smiling down at me. "Matthew will follow you home." She'd made it clear that the conversation was over, and I had little will to fight with the steel in her gaze, exhaustion suddenly tiring me, but I figured I should at least try. I was about to protest but Mathew was already up and walking toward the door, shoulders wound tense and his biceps were rounded with how he was clenching his fists.
The whole way home his Silverado sat in my rear view. It was the most comforting thing I'd ever seen. All the fear I'd felt claw at me because of Matthew had receded to a dull warmth. He was a guardian to me, and had always been. I got out of my car at the house and he was parked across the road. I crossed to his window.
"I thought of something." I said as I approached. He raised an eyebrow behind mirrored sunglasses. He was Matthew Dyllan Cavalier again. An enigma wrapped in a mystery, and his expression was schooled, though I could tell he was still angry.
"How do I explain where I've been to the school?" He smirked; really it was just the most minute twist of his lips. He couldn't fool me. He cared, and I knew it now. And that made his little blazE façade reek of the bullshit I knew it was, but I feared what that meant. He couldn't hold me in his arms and say nice things in my ear to calm me down after I died and yell at me that he'd been protecting me for fourteen years unless he cared. But no. His life was on the line if he didn't, Kat would kill him, Alex had said. He didn't care, it was just self preservation. The thought made my insides deflate like an overblown party balloon.
"My mother called and told them you had a migraine like a nuclear bomb and had been medicated and put to bed. After the bruises, people believed it." He said simply.
"Oh. Thanks." my new thought process had gone dark when I realized he probably felt about me the exact same Joey had and rightfully so. I spun on my heel and went inside the house, cursing my stupidity the whole way.
***
James carried me as he ran, my head whipping and my hair flying, my vision blurred and head hurt, my eyes stinging and my throat sore as I coughed from the smoke. I could see the flames that engulfed the building in flickering red. and orange lighting up the beautifully dark night. I was little enough to have to wrap both arms around James and try wrap my legs around his wide ribcage.
Gunshots fired off and Kat yelled "James!" My hair continued to fly in the night's wind and I could see the stars. At least, I could see the ones that weren't hidden by the thick black smoke.
"Get her out!" Kat yelled, and I looked for her. She was slender, her hair was long, so long and beautifully dark. She was tall and thin and beautiful, and dressed simply in dark jeans and a white t-shirt. It was smeared with something blood. She caught up to James, took me and held me up, pressing me to her chest. I caught a face full of hair that smelled like fierceness and strength and it was a comforting smell. Her shoulders were shaking and her voice was thin and she was sobbing. So I hugged her neck and pressed my face to her collarbone. I was wondering where something was. I needed it. I desperately wanted-
Darkness, and then I woke again in the helicopter. Kat kneeled in front of me and her hair was flying and her face looked dark and she cried. But she was talking to me.
"I'm sorry baby, I'm so, so sorry. Oh my God, I'm so sorry baby-" she kept crying the words and James's eyes were midnight blue. He was holding her. He was upset. Why were they crying? Why was she saying sorry? I'm always safe when I'm with-
"We need to keep her safe." She pulled me to her chest and hugged me so close. Something was wrong. I had to ask; "Where's-" she cut me off.
"Its okay, Baby. Here, okay?" she set me back down and took something out of her collar. I stared at it, hanging off its silver chain. I'd never seen her take it off, she always wore it around her neck. She pressed the chain over my head. It was my emerald.
"Are you sure that's a good idea? If they find her-" James started. "They wont." she cut him off. "They wont ever find her. Not while I'm alive. They wont." she sounded desperate, her face dark. She said; "Everything's gonna be all right baby, we've got you." but my voice was shrill when I demanded-
"Where's-" Darkness. My eyes were slatted closed and I was being carried again.
"Take good care of her, watch her." James said quietly. I saw a red blur, coppery red, and brown eyes and heard a deep, deep rumble that murmured something back- "We will. All of us. She'll become a ghost, old friend, and so should you." and I turned my head and I saw someone under me, a boy.
About my age, no, a few years older. Light brown eyes like toffee, set in a small face. A small, serous face. And then he saw me looking and smiled.
"Everything's gonna be okay." he whispered.
He was Matthew.
Darkness
***